Inside the strange new world of being a deepfake actor

What "poll watching" really means 

Sponsored by Dassault Systèmes The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology 10.09.20 Good morning! Today: what it's like to be a deepfake actor, what "poll watching" really means, and the ethics of AI that reads your emotions. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Inside the strange new world of being a deepfake actor   In 2019, two multimedia artists, Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund, set about to pursue a provocative idea. Deepfake video and audio had been advancing in parallel but had yet to be integrated into a complete experience. Could they do it in a way that demonstrated the technology’s full potential while educating people about how it could be abused? To bring the experiment to life, they chose an equally provocative subject: they would create an alternative history of the 1969 Apollo moon landing. Before the launch, US president Richard Nixon’s speechwriters had prepared two versions of his national address—one designated “In Event of Moon Disaster,” in case things didn’t go as planned. The real Nixon, fortunately, never had to deliver it. But a deepfake Nixon could. So Panetta partnered up with two AI companies. Canny AI would handle the deepfake video, and Respeecher would prepare the deepfake audio. With all the technical components in place, they just needed one last thing: an actor who would supply the performance. “We needed to find somebody who was willing to do this, because it’s a little bit of a weird ask,” Burgund says. “Somebody who was more flexible in their thinking about what an actor is and does.” As deepfakes have grown increasingly realistic, more and more artists and filmmakers have begun using them in broadcast-quality productions and TV ads. This means hiring real actors for one aspect of the performance or another. Some jobs require an actor to provide “base” footage; others need a voice. For actors, it opens up exciting creative and professional possibilities. But it also raises a host of ethical questions. Read the full story. —Karen Hao What “poll watching” really means What’s happening: President Trump is trying to recruit an “army” of poll watchers for Election Day. As part of his ongoing disinformation campaign about election fraud, these aggressive appeals to his supporters are raising worries about voter intimidation—or worse. But poll watching is a legitimate activity used by both parties and outside groups to monitor the vote. Their job is to make sure every candidate has a fair chance. They must follow very specific rules and cannot intervene with voters. What could go wrong? When the president tells the Proud Boys, a white supremacist organization, to “stand by” and calls his poll watchers an “army,” it implicitly creates the threat of violence on Election Day. That perception itself could be enough to intimidate voters and lower turnout for groups who believe they’d be targeted. Are there protections? For all the rising rhetoric, the law is clear, and voters should know they are protected from this kind of activity, which is already illegal across the United States. Election officials and poll workers are actively looking for illegal intimidation near polls and increasingly speaking up to say they’ll prosecute attempts at voter intimidation. Read the full story. —Patrick Howell O’Neill AI reads human emotions. Should it?  AI can read your emotional response to advertising and your facial expressions in a job interview. But if it can already do all this, what happens next? In part two of our podcast series on emotion AI, host Jennifer Strong and senior AI reporter Karen Hao explore the implications of how it’s used and where it’s heading in the future. Listen to it on Apple podcasts or your preferred platform. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + This baby is astonished at its own skills.   + Facebook’s algorithm rejected a photo of some onions for being too sexy.   + Inside the wonderful world of Asian pasta. Sponsor Message Science powering a sustainable and resilient world Join Dassault Systèmes at Science in the Age of Experience – an exclusive, virtual science and technology event, starting October 13, 2020. Hear how industry leaders, renowned scientists/academics, government leaders, heads of private institutions and Dassault Systèmes executives and experts will set the course for a more efficient, innovative and sustainable future. Some of the most highly sought-after leaders in science and technology will join us – including our conference keynote, Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Frances Arnold of Caltech. Request registration. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 India will soon have more covid-19 cases than the US An epidemiologist attributed it to “habituation, desensitization, fatalism, fatigue, denial.” (NYT $)   + Coronavirus has killed three times as many Brits as flu and pneumonia combined. (Sky)   + US states stopped their pandemic social restrictions too early. (Ars Technica)  2 The FBI charged 13 men with plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor  The scary thing is imagining how many more of these armed groups are forming. (NBC)   + At least one of them seems to have been radicalized online during the pandemic. (NBC)   + Facebook, of course, played a role. (NYT $)  3 Covid-19 has led to an uptick in the use of electronic ankle monitors Without action now, this sort of “surveillance creep” could become permanent. (TR)   4 Trump is refusing to do virtual debates I strongly suspect he fears the mute button. (CNN)   5 A GPT-3 bot posted comments on Reddit for a week and no one noticed If we want these sorts of systems to do no harm, they require more scrutiny. (TR)   6 Facebook just pushed a group of its critics offline Purely out of concern over trademark infringements, of course. (Vice)   + Facebook took down a load of fake pro-Trump accounts. (WSJ $)  7 The US will set up record numbers of wind and solar installations this year But whether it’s a blip of the start of a green revolution depends on what policymakers do next. (Scientific American)   + Prince William and David Attenborough have launched what they hope will become the “Nobel prize for environmentalism.” (BBC)  8 Asteroid Bennu may have been home to ancient water flows An imminent NASA mission will attempt to collect rocks and bring them back to Earth to be studied. (TR)   9 People are using paper planners to restore a sense of order to their lives And millions of them are swapping tips online. (Wired $)   10 Meet the guy who makes the music for TikTok’s most viral hits 🎵 Lots of them really hinge on the timing and convergence of music and dancing. (The Verge)   + Fleetwood Mac’s song “Dreams” is having a moment on the app. (WP $) What are the next big innovations–and how can they help us solve the world's toughest challenges? In just 1 week, join us virtually at our flagship event, EmTech MIT, as we bring together leaders, researchers, and innovators from across the globe to find out. Register now. Take a stand “Their approach to how to handle this is different from mine.” —Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate, explains he hasn’t visited the White House for two months because of the lack of mask-wearing and social distancing policies. Top image credit: PANETTA AND BURGUND Please send hot onions to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free Leading with Innovation. Join us online, October 19-22. Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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